Hello. We're artists working through collaborative social practice and creative research to understand the ways in which locality is shaped and enacted in the city.

By Justin Langlois on June 6th, 2010, 9:25 pm 5 Comments

For 30 days, this project will call on over 25 different artists, writers, designers, restauranteurs, musicians, architects, archivists, and other interested parties to occupy a space in downtown Windsor for up to one month in June and July 2010 to attempt to intervene with the everyday realities of skyrocketing vacancy rates, failing economic strategies, and a place in need of new imagination.

We’ve been planning this for months, and we’re incredibly excited to see it finally launch this Friday, June 11, 2010.

Michelle will be posting constantly for the next month, and we’ll be noting the open and close times for each day soon. In the meantime,  feel free to download the entire schedule in PDF.

The Schedule: All projects take place in either 406, 410 or 424 Pelissier Street in downtown Windsor.

Participants	Dates	Project Description
Daragh Sankey (Toronto, ON)	June 10 – 13 June 17 – 20 June 25 – July 11	How To Make a Documentary: Live documentation of the residency in its entirety/video editing workshops.
Jolie Inthavong (Windsor, ON)	June 11 –17	The Breakroom: A Profit-Free Cafe and Lunch.
Eric Cheung (Toronto, ON)	June 11 – 21	Creation of an interior urban green park.
Andrea Carvalho (Montreal, QC)	June 11 – 21	A series of actions and tactics challenging Windsor-specific Non-Places.
Julie René de Cotret & Jefferson Campbell-Cooper (Guelph, ON)	June 11 – 23	The Peoples Museum & Fabulations de Windsor: Bilingual community-based story telling and story gathering.
Sara French (Vancouver, BC)	June 11 – July 8	Norman Eberstein: An interactive, live performance involving surveillance cameras and a security guard at work.
Nicole Grinstead (Montreal, QC)	June 13 – 19	Swap Shop.
Jodi Green (Windsor, ON)	June 14 – 25	The Sweater Factory: process-based performance involving the unraveling and re-assembly of sweaters.
(Department of Unusual Certainties) (Toronto, ON)	June 15 – July 11	Storefront Success Stories: Based on admiration for the local shopkeeper, the project aims to create new connections, knowledge, and theories between Windsor’s different businesses, people, and sites of productivity.
Kero (Windsor, ON / Detroit, MI)	June 17 – 20	An interactive motion-sensored installation engaging outside pedestrians and interior viewers.
Leesa Bringas (Windsor, ON)	June 18 – 30	Collaborative letter-writing campaign to vacant homes on Indian Road.
Stephen Surlin (Windsor, ON	June 20 – 29	An experimenting / prototyping / recording research phase for the collecting of urban sounds through contact microphones.
Terre Chartrand, Garth Rennie, Zoey Heath, Phil Beaudoin (Windsor, ON & Kitchener / Waterloo, ON)	June 20 – 27	A visual exchange between Kitchener-Waterloo and Windsor: a ride down the highway dialog through photographic and sound experience.
Lea Bucknell (BC/London, ON)	June 22 – July 1 June 30, 7pm (opening)	Community-shaped, Interactive Interior garden space.
Thea Jones (Montreal, QC)	June 23 – 26	Multimedia installation using process-based research of the Detroit-Windsor bridge and tunnel which cross the Detroit River.
Thom Provost (Windsor, ON)	June 24 – 30	Storefront projection installation using Google Street View stills of Windsor.
Denise St Marie (Toronto, ON)	June 25 – 27	Talk To Strangers: a text-based outdoor window installation.
Ayesha Drouillard & Nicolette Westfall (Windsor, ON)	June 27, 28, July 4, 5 (workshops), July 7-8 (show)	IMAGINATION LAB: walk-in art workshops for kids accompanied by their caregivers.
Merry Ellen Scully Mosna (Windsor, ON)	June 28 – 29	Portraits, Pies and Peace: Sunday afternoon discussions, and sharing of homemade pie, plus some drawing and painting.
Logan Davis (Windsor, ON)	June 28 – July 1	Interactive Light Board Window Installation.
Robin Fitzsimons (Toronto, ON)	June 28 – July 2	Donation-based in-store training to improve gambling skills – geared towards subverting the economy in Windsor.
Doodle Heads: Elizabeth Prosser & Nicolette Westfall (Windsor, ON)	June 29, 30 (workshops), July 1-July 3 (show)	Graffiti Workshops and Showing.
Joshua Babcock (Windsor, ON)	June 29 – July 11	Invention and Solution Hub (ISH): ongoing brainstorming and mapping activity.
Brad Tinmouth (Toronto, ON)	June 30 – July 2	Pro-Click Factory: digital, interactive open-mic nights. An evening lecture and their techniques for cultivating the best YouTube videos.
Laura Paolini (Toronto, ON)	July 1 – 11	Bell Payphone Labs: PL1999 and GMBLL. Payphone intervention workshops.
And And Collective (Waterloo, ON)	July 3 – 11	The Amalgamated City of W: Imagined merging of Windsor and Waterloo through campaign office meetings, consultations and presentations.
Lee Rodney (Windsor, ON)	July 5 – 8	Border Bookmobile: A reading station.
Emily Colombo (Sault Ste. Marie, ON)	July 5 – 10	Multiple public Interventions based on analysis of debt-accumulation, poverty, city-beautification, and community engagement.

This project is generously supported by the City of Windsor: Cultural Affairs Office, Arts Council Windsor & Region, Windsor Pride, and the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: BCL collaboration downtown innovation projects research residency SRSI storefronts Windsor

By Justin Langlois on May 6th, 2010, 9:22 pm 3 Comments

The details: Friday, May 21 at 7pm, Art Gallery of Windsor.

For the past five months, we’ve been working on a series of events aimed at unfolding the stories, experiences, images, geography, buildings, folkloric histories, people, and places that make Windsor the city that it is. Perhaps you’ve come out to one of our community events in the Broken City Lab: Save the City series, or perhaps you’ve just read about it here, or maybe you’ve meant to come, but you haven’t been able to fit it into your schedule — in an case, this is going to be our final event as part of the project, and you should come.

The things that we’ve learned from working with the community on creating audio documentaries, city-wide maps, sidewalk-parades, and postcards with hand-written letters have changed the way we think about this city, its past, and its future.

So, we would like to cordially invite you to the final part of Save the City on May 21st at the Art Gallery of Windsor. We’ll be in or around the building depending on the weather, but either way, we promise we won’t be hard to find. We would like you to come out to share with us one more time some of the things that shape the way you think about Windsor — we’ll talk about what we’ve learned, we’ll ask you a bunch of questions, we’ll show you hundreds of photographs, and then we’ll ask you to help us come up with a message that we’ll then put up on a billboard (or two) somewhere in Windsor. We’re hoping that this message can say something to the city that needs to be said.

Hope you can make it.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: AGW artist talk BCL research Save the City think tank Windsor

By Justin Langlois on May 10th, 2010, 8:27 pm 0 Comments

Danielle and I will head to Portland State University this weekend to participate in Open Engagement, the conference that asks questions like, “Does socially engaged art have a responsibility to create public good? Can there be transdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art making that would contribute to issues such as urban planning and sustainability?”

We’ll be speaking on the panel, Group Work: The Collective Impetus, along with folks from National Bitter Melon Council, InCUBATE, and students from OTIS’s Public Practice program.

This trip is going to incredible for a few reasons (including getting to see the city of Portland, in all of it’s functionality), but perhaps more importantly, we’re going to be able to speak to a lot of people who are engaged in a practice that is at least slightly aligned to what we do here in BCL. It’s more often the case that we go to a conference as some of the only artists in attendance (an interesting position to be in, but always a little lonely).

There’s so many conversations we want to have, the 3 days we’re actually there likely won’t be enough.

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Tagged: BCL collectivism conference group work panel pdx Portland research social practice

By Justin Langlois on March 31st, 2010, 12:28 am 6 Comments

The details: Sunday, April 11th via email & Tuesday, April 27th at 7pm, at Artspeak Gallery.

As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, Broken City Lab is inviting Windsorites to venture out into the city and take five photographs that showcase what makes our city “worth saving.” These photographs will be turned into a series of postcards that will be mailed out to other cities across the country to prompt a discussion around the differences between how Windsor is viewed by its residents versus how Windsor is viewed by people from outside the city.

Please submit your photographic responses to the following criteria in landscape orientation (your images should be wider than they are taller):

1) Someone you’d hate to see leave
2) Something inspiring
3) Somewhere that made you feel something important
4) Somewhere you know you’ll always find a familiar face
5) Something with potential

Once you’ve captured your images of “things worth saving,” please submit all five to thingsworthsaving@brokencitylab.org by 11:59pm on Sunday, April 11th, 2010. Your submissions will be turned into a series of postcards, so please only submit photographs that you are willing to send out into the world.

Then on April 27th at 7pm, Broken City Lab will host a massive mailout / postcard writing party, at Artspeak Gallery, located at 1942 Wyandotte Street East, where you’re invited to help address all of those postcards and write personalized messages to the rest of the country!

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: BCL Canada mail perception photographs postcards research Save the City submissions Windsor

By Justin Langlois on April 6th, 2010, 4:37 pm 1 Comments

In just a couple days, Danielle and I will be headed down to Lexington, Kentucky, where I’ll be presenting at this year’s Creative Cities Summit as part of the Using Art to Change Cities panel. The summit runs from April 7 – 9, 2010, I’ll be presenting on Friday, April 9th.

Here’s the panel description (good fit, no?):

Most cities support traditional notions of arts and culture, the symphony, opera, ballet and museums. Beyond those traditional bastions of culture there are artists and entrepreneurs that are actively using art to change their communities for the better. Public art is more than just the statue in front of the building and can be beautifully integrated into projects for startling results. Guerrilla art interventions, some legal, some illegal, can provoke dialog and action where before there was gridlock. And art can be used to change our very notions of fundamental things like healthcare and education to astounding results. This eclectic panel will attack this issue from their unique perspectives and is not the traditional arts and cultural conversation.

I’m so excited to get to be a part of this conversation and Danielle and I are both anxious to hear more about other cities and how they’re responding (or not) to the idea of becoming a creative city. Complex and holistic problem-solving seems to be at the foundation of what this conference wants to address — we’re hoping to learn a lot.

Did you make it to Detroit’s edition back in 2008?

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Tagged: cities Creative Cities Summit Kentucky Lexington panel presentation research talk

By Justin Langlois on March 8th, 2010, 8:00 am 3 Comments

The details: Saturday, March 20th at 3pm, meet at the corner of University and Pelissier.

As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will invite the community to learn the Francophone history of Windsor through a collective performance and storytelling of traditional French Folk Songs native to the Detroit River region on Saturday, March 20th at 3pm.

Led by Dr Marcel Beneteau, a professor in the Department of Folklore and Ethnology at the University of Sudbury, participants will meet at University Avenue and Pelissier Street to take part in a walking oral history tour and performance, which will stop at the streets along Riverside Drive named after Windsor’s French settlers such as Goyeau, Langlois, Marentette, Louis, Parent and Pierre.

The retelling of the brief oral history at each street will be followed by a collective open performance of the French Folk song led by the local Francophone musician. Video and audio documentation of the performances will subsequently be made available on the Broken City Lab / Save the City website.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: BCL folklore Francophone history parade research Save the City songs Windsor

By Justin Langlois on February 6th, 2010, 4:00 pm 4 Comments

The details: Sunday, February 28, 2010 (1pm) at 362 California Ave, Windsor

As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, and to better understand the city and its rich and failed history, Broken City Lab researchers will host an open community event on Sunday, February 28, 2010 at 1pm to map and invent two distinct community tours—Sites of Apology and Sites of Hope.

Throughout the first part of the event, Broken City Lab will lead community participants in brainstorming the numerous sites deemed to be worthy of apology—these could include failed strip malls, roads without sidewalks, or former auto factories—along with the numerous sites that give community participants hope for the city—these could include an especially great bike trail, sites of architectural significance, or places that can be imagined as being easily improved.

Immediately following the creation of these lists, Broken City Lab will set out to demarcate and officially designate each Site of Apology and Site of Hope. At each site, a short ceremony will be held and community members are welcomed to come along to help recognize each and every site.

A map demarcating each of the designated Sites of Apology and Sites of Hope will be made available online to encourage the ongoing investigation of these sites by community members.

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: architecture BCL event geography lists research Save the City sites Windsor

By Justin Langlois on February 16th, 2010, 12:03 pm 1 Comments

We’re packing up and heading down to Chattanooga, Tennessee tomorrow to attend CreateHere‘s City Share Mini Conference.

What the conference is all about:

“City Share is a conference for seeding innovative projects.We bring great minds from across disciplines together in Chattanooga, Tennessee to teach, share, plan, and change. The result? International knowledge-sharing; a growing network of change-makers; and organizations across the world better equipped to serve cities, for one, for all.”

We’re excited to catch up with our friends from CreateHere (who visited us back in November), and also to meet a ton of new people. I’m quite sure we’re going to be very inspired — just check out some of the other participants.

As we continue to work on our projects, our research, and our practice, it’s really great to continue to get to know other people who aren’t necessarily working as an arts collective, but are attempting to do some of the same things we are — namely, re-imagining creative activity in response to a place.

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Tagged: BCL Chattanooga cities conference create here presentation research travel

By Justin Langlois on January 12th, 2010, 12:07 am 9 Comments

The details: Sunday, January 24, 2010 (8pm) at Phog Lounge (157 University Ave W, Windsor)

As part of the Broken City Lab: Save the City project, Broken City Lab researchers will facilitate a community workshop to brainstorm, uncover, and share personal histories of Windsor, inviting a range of community members to participate in the process. The workshop will begin with a discussion about the importance in personal histories alongside official histories of a city, and then lead to the opportunity for community participants to share their own stories about Windsor.

Throughout this part of workshop, we are going to help you to record one another’s stories on portable MP3 audio recorders and encourage the retelling of stories throughout the workshop. After the workshop, the recorded audio stories will be uploaded to the Broken City Lab website and offered for streaming and downloading. As well, a copy of the edited collection of the stories will be donated to the Windsor Archives.

We think that the best way to start understanding this city is to hear the stories from the people who live here.

With that in mind, we’re going to ask you two questions about the city:

What brought you here? and Why are you still here?

See you on the 24th!!!!

Broken City Lab: Save the City is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council.

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Tagged: audio BCL event research Save the City Windsor

By Justin Langlois on January 15th, 2010, 4:26 pm 5 Comments

On Thursday, January 21st at the Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts in Toronto, we’ll be doing a projection performance that examines the language and ideas surrounding public space, intervention, urban surfaces, and city infrastructures. As part of Propeller’s Public Realm exhibition, we will curate a text-based list of ideas, statements, and questions, that address the concerns embedded in our practice and that appear to be at the heart of the exhibition itself.

We will ask for the participation of those in attendance, along with other momentary collaborators through tools such as Twitter and SMS, for submissions during the duration of the performance. The projection itself will consist of white text and will be projected onto the façade of a nearby building. Photographic documentation of the projection will be installed in the gallery space afterwards.

Public Realm opens on January 20th and runs to January 31st, 2010.

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Tagged: BCL event exhbition projection public public realm research